2009 Iran poll protests trial
Over 140 defendants,[1] including prominent politicians, academics and writers, were put on trial for participating in the 2009 Iranian election protests.
Other people put on trial include French Embassy employee, Nazak Afshar, nine British Embassy employees, including the Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, Hossein Rassam, Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari, and French academic Clotilde Reiss.
[8] The charges included "rioting", "vandalism" and "acting against national security", "disturbing public order," having ties with counter-revolutionary groups according to official sources.
Critics of the prosecution and the confessions by the accused, such as Pamela Kilpadi, say the confessions, "have been forced under duress from (people) being held in an undisclosed location without access to a lawyer, family, or friends, in violation of the human rights treaties to which Iran is supposedly a signatory,"[10] Prosecutors have warned against questioning the legitimacy of the trial, threatening to prosecute doubters.
[11] The prosecutor read an indictment on August 8, 2009, that accused United States and Britain of stoking the unrest in an attempt to create a "soft overthrow" of the Iranian government.
[6] The prosecution is led by Saeed Mortazavi, the Prosecutor General of Tehran,[12] who has been called a "hardliner" for his role in the death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi,[13] and the shutting down of 60 pro-reform newspapers.
[12] According to journalist Borzou Daragahi, "only reporters with news organizations controlled by Ahmadinejad or his loyalists were granted access to the courtroom.
[18] Iran's former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi was sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in the protests.
[20] Former Prime Minister and presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has called the treatment of prisoners on trial "medieval torture".
Authorities claimed that they had "pre-existing conditions" that led to their deaths, however, examining of the bodies would show signs of torture and broken bones.
He came under scrutiny of the Iranian government when he refused to change the death certificate of Mohsen Rouhalamini, a protester detained at Kahrizakt, to meningitis rather than from torture and beatings.
[30] On November 28, 2018 guards in Khoy female prison, north west of Iran attacked inmate Zeynab Jalalian and confiscated all her belongings.
"[32] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the trials a "sign of weakness" and that it shows Iran "is afraid of its own people" in an interview with CNN.
